world could only be enriched by the poverty of Israel.

3. Regenerating Influence.

How blind are they who have reproached Christianity with being inapplicable! Of all religious doctrines and philosophic systems, it is, on the contrary, the only one which is applicable, the only one of which the whole forms can be assumed by society, and which in its turn takes the whole form of society.

It is very inappropriate surely to tax with sterility a religion which has stirred so many ideas, given the waking touch to so many geniuses, and, what is even better, cultivates so many intellects that philosophy would have left fallow-a religion which philosophers cannot leave out of account, which pre-occupies them in spite of themselves, and with which, however they object to it, they are still obliged to make their systems square. In point of research and study, what has it prevented, what has it condemned, except what common sense had condemned before? I mean those speculations which the human consciousness is not admitted to verify.

All the elevated and impartial amongst thinkers have long ago recognised the intellectual and moral wealth of Christianity; what it has given to arts, literature, civilisation, and what it continually goes on giving, is incalculable.

It has been said of certain rich and forcible lan

guages, that they carry their man. Christianity, which one might also call an internal language, carries its man or its world. Our thinkings add nothing to it; it incessantly adds to our thinking, magnum mentis incrementum. It is for all those that its glance attracts, the principle of an originality, in some sort impersonal, the ceaselessly open source of great, new, and touching ideas, which, confounding themselves with their source, oblige the mind that has conceived them to doubt whether it has been their author or their witness, their birthplace or their mirror. It is with it as with a seed endowed with inherent energy, which, deposited in man, "whether he sleep or wake, by night or by day, grows and spreads he knows not how;" a germ obscure indeed, without form or beauty,-a grain of dust which contains and compresses in its breast the tree with its mighty branches, and its wealth of foliage.

When we read that Jesus Christ is come to seek and to save that which was lost, we are given to understand that he is come to seek and to save not only all men, but also all man; consequently, all his faculties, all his aptitude, the man of earth as well as of the skies; in other words, humanity as well

as man.

If we wish to place man at the starting point of all correct ideas, in the way to all practical truths, it is well to lead him to embrace the Christian religion by the side that interests reason, a thing per

haps too much neglected, and which would render this religion an instrument of intellectual development, no less than of moral culture, for the mass of society.

Christianity embraces the whole; it shows the sovereignty of its principle, not in destroying anything whatever, but in assimilating all things. All becomes Christian for the Christian, nothing is absolutely outside of the domain of the gospel; it has saved the whole of man, and the whole of life. Hence it is that when once Christianity rules life we enjoy a great liberty (and a little previous servitude is the apprenticeship to this liberty). Nothing is profane, with the one exception of sin; life is not divided, there is no particular point where Christianity stops short; you might as well try to prevent the atmospheres of two countries from blending above the mountains which form their frontiers.

On

the contrary, truth frees us from conventional distinctions or separations as from all others; our liberty is proportioned to our submission, our latitude to our precision.

The price that Divine love has paid for our salvation avails, no doubt, to redeem or save our intellect, at the same time as our hearts; but what was the aim of the Lord's messenger? Did he come to expiate the errors of our judgment or the sins of our will? Did he purpose to make of us sages or saints? This single fact sufficiently establishes the truth I propound to you; and which, even without it, I am bold

to say your conscience would establish. The glory of man is in the rectitude and right employment of his will, and the glory of the intellect is to subserve the triumph of the moral principle.

Everywhere, when Christianity introduces itself, civilized man draws nearer to nature, while the savage rises to civilisation; they each advance a few steps in inverse directions towards a common centre, which is that of true sociality and true civilisation.

CHAPTER II.

DOCTRINE.

I. OF DOCTRINE IN GENERAL.

1. Nature of Christian Doctrine.

WHAT is a doctrine? An idea, or a system of ideas, that some grasp with mind and heart both, others only with the mind. The life of the first cannot fail to be modified by the doctrines they hold. Not so the last; these may bring forth other fruits than those their doctrine seemed to imply; nay, they may bring forth quite contrary ones.

The Christian religion, solely pre-occupied with the restoration of the human will, has only told of dogmas (or rather of the mysterious facts come to its knowledge), just what was strictly necessary for its purpose. Far from fully satisfying human curiosity, it has sent it empty away on several points; thus imposing upon it an exercise of submission, before or after many others of the same kind. This imperfection of a system, if it were a system, seems to me admirable in a religion, and communicates to ours a holy and austere character which is all its own. It is the character of all the dogmas clearly revealed in